Call It A Draw

The early morning after Midsummer's Eve has passed runs quiet on Second Avenue. The threat of rain hangs in clouds above the water towers, but you don't think too much about it. Weather doesn't mean as much in a country that doesn't rise and fall with a withholding sun, and Battery Park was filled to the brim last night with white-haired people sweating in their summer dresses. You sat there staring at the sea of your ilk and remembered only the reasons you didn't belong with them. Hours later, the strawberries and wine doing cartwheels in your head, what a relief to walk back into the jungle of skyscrapers, to lean into the Uptown 1 train and let it rock you gently back to a sense of home. A sleeping child hangs heavy in your arms, what does she know yet of the melancholy of summer solstice. Perhaps she'll never learn; the streets of New York has many things yet to beat into her. My grandfather celebrates his 67th wedding anniversary alone, and there is no way to measure such an absence in your heart.

The words come out jumbled some days, the thoughts. They stack in your head like Friday night rush hour down Seventh Avenue, and try as you might, there's no weaving between the cars. The street below your window begins to wake.

Promises to keep you safe.